Mo­sisili mocks colo­nial rule

MAKHALENG — Prime Min­is­ter Pakalitha Mo­sisili says he shares the same sen­ti­ments with the “el­ders” who de­clared “it is bet­ter to mis­gov­ern our­selves than to be gov­erned well by oth­ers”.

Dr Mo­sisili made the re­mark on Mon­day dur­ing the sod-turn­ing cer­e­mony of Simione Po­lice Post in Makhaleng.

The premier fur­ther said dif­fer­ent Ba­sotho gov­ern­ments recorded more achieve­ments in 50 years com­pared to the Bri­tish who only built a tarred road in 98 years of pre­sid­ing over Le­sotho.

He, how­ever, said no sin­gle gov­ern­ment could claim it de­vel­oped Le­sotho since the coun­try gained in­de­pen­dence in 1966.

“Today’s event is a sign that this gov­ern­ment is com­mit­ted to im­prov­ing the lives of Ba­sotho and en­sure ef­fec­tive and ef­fi­cient service-de­liv­ery.

“If this post is go­ing to be sim­i­lar to that of Ha Mokhalinyane, you will be pleased to know that you are go­ing to have a beau­ti­ful post. We must do beau­ti­ful things for our­selves be­cause we are now in­de­pen­dent,” Dr Mo­sisili said.

“I must thank Ntate Monyane Moleleki (Min­is­ter of Po­lice and Pub­lic Safety) for point­ing out that gain­ing in­de­pen­dence gave Ba­sotho an op­por­tu­nity to do things for them­selves, which is why we must strive to do beau­ti­ful things. If we fail, we will have no-one to blame but our­selves.”

He also said ev­ery gov­ern­ment has had its own fair share of devel­op­ment from Le­abua Jonathan’s ad­min­is­tra­tion at in­de­pen­dence to the cur­rent seven-party coali­tion gov­ern­ment.

“In 1998, there was an­other gov­ern­ment led by me and we took the devel­op­ment ba­ton in three con­sec­u­tive elec­tive gov­ern­ments. Ntate Tha­bane then took over the ba­ton and un­for­tu­nately, they only took two-and-half years and passed it on to me.

“The pic­ture I am try­ing to paint here is that there is no sin­gle gov­ern­ment which can boast that it de­vel­oped this coun­try sin­gle-hand­edly since our in­de­pen­dence.

“Just be­cause it’s me today, I should not boast about other peo­ple’s achieve­ments but rather ap­pre­ci­ate that each gov­ern­ment played its part and we are all work­ing to­wards a com­mon goal — de­vel­op­ing the na­tion,”

He said the coun­try could only de­velop if each gov­ern­ment takes the devel­op­ment ba­ton and runs as fast as pos­si­ble to em­power Ba­sotho.

He said it was for this rea­son that “the el­ders” were cor­rect to chase away the Bri­tish.

“When peo­ple were com­plain­ing that we were go­ing to lack a lot of things like sugar if we chased away the colonists, some of the el­ders ar­gued that ‘ it is bet­ter to mis­gov­ern our­selves than to be gov­erned well by oth­ers’ and they were cor­rect to say that,” he said.

He said Ba­sotho were gov­ern­ing them­selves far much bet­ter than what was hap­pen­ing dur­ing the Bri­tish era.

Dr Mo­sisili how­ever, warned gov­er­nance was not easy.

“When peo­ple are fight­ing for vic­tory, they don’t nurse each other and the truth of the mat­ter is even a fool can see that we are de­vel­op­ing; peo­ple’s lives are im­prov­ing,” he said in ref­er­ence to the Simione Po­lice Post.

“The coali­tion agree­ment form­ing this gov­ern­ment clearly states this is a devel­op­ment-ori­ented gov­ern­ment and part of this devel­op­ment jour­ney is en­sur­ing po­lice of­fi­cers en­joy good work­ing con­di­tions.”

He said it was gov­ern­ment’s hope to re­fur­bish all po­lice sta­tions although this was not pos­si­ble at the mo­ment due to lack of funds.

“I am glad the po­lice heard gov­ern­ment’s pol­icy to en­sure sta­tions are eas­ily ac­ces­si­ble. This is what we call cen­tre of devel­op­ment and very soon, other min­istries like Home Af­fairs will bring their na­tional iden­tity and civil reg­is­tra­tion ser­vices here.”